LayEd s02e13
Thoughts from the GM: So, I'm going to be writing up a post-mortem about the campaign to try to get a grip on things that I can do better and the things that I liked about the campaign. Also, I'm going to try to talk about things that changed in the campaign as it went along. I think that limiting myself to 12 adventures/scenarios was just about right. Not too long, not too short. I honestly thought you guys would be around Circle 10 by the end, but clearly, I underestimated the extreme LP costs it takes to Circle up in Earthdawn. The dungeon crawls were LONG. They were run at the pace of the players, which requires one person to be a trailblazer (and the role fell on Steve), and there was little way that I could pace it to be interesting without simply cutting content near the end. I think part of the appeal of the game is that you can do Dungeon Crawls, and it makes sense in the game world, but if I had to do it all over again, I'd reserve 2 game sessions for each crawl (with "To be continued..." points sprinkled throughout), and space the crawls out a bit less frequently than every other session. As much as I liked the leveling mechanic in Earthdawn (especially Thread items), it was a lot of book-keeping. I think the Group Thread stuff made the characters a bit overpowered in the end, but early on, it was totally necessary to get you guys to the power levels that you needed. I didn't like the social interaction options in Earthdawn. They are too hemmed into Talents, in my opinion. Same thing with Perception tests. If I wanted to send a swarm challenge against you (more than 10 enemies), the combat took a lot longer than it should have. One thing I appreciate about One Roll Engine is the fact that you can represent a gang or a group as a single entity easily. Earthdawn does not accommodate swarms nearly as well. Combat also seems to be tightly keyed to Initiative tests, given the large amount of Talents that require you to beat others in Initiative. It was a bit "all or nothing", given that I was rolling Initiative for the whole group of enemies rather than the individual enemies. I was a bit surprised that Strain wasn't a huge problem for the most part; I was predicting that it would be a major challenge, but you folks seemed to balance Strain costs very well. Healing was a bit burdensome. I tried to automate it as much as possible, but it was still difficult to resolve. The first time I ran into a serious balance problem was pitting you guys against Watermark. That was a bit of a mistake, and I clearly underestimated the utility of Physical Armor in Earthdawn. After that scenario, I knew that the single most important stat for balancing an encounter was Physical Armor. The toughest fights were always against dudes with more than double your Circle of Physical Armor. The Thamon Ariok turnabout was supposed to be a surprise, with a little foreshadowing. I don't know how well it went, but I was pleased with it. I knew I wanted to make some themed dungeons, and I wanted to involve the Passions as the final "goal" of the campaign. And these goals were mostly successful, I think. I'm really happy with the way that MapTools was able to automate the Earthdawn rules. I also really enjoyed the interaction you guys had with Buualgathor, a known powerful Horror. You managed to not be corrupted by the Horror and successfully negotiate with it, which is pretty epic. At first, I really enjoyed making unique and fun magic items. But the shine of doing that kind of wore off as the campaign went along. I think that if I start another campaign, I will make all of the magic items in advance, such that I wouldn't have the "burden" of magic item creation in the middle of the campaign. If we do a future campaign, I'd like to explore two themes: 1) The search for Aal'viss (a sort of "Indiana Earthdawn and the Last Crusade" vibe, or perhaps Doctor Livingston, where you are looking for a "lost explorer") 2) the fallout from this campaign, where the Passion of Love and Music and the Passion of Wealth and Prosperity have been corrupted, and cults spring up that worship the Mad version of the Passions (Perhaps a Mad Passion of Hate and Dissonance, and a Mad Passion of Greed). In my mind, the Mad Passions can eventually be "cured" before the 4th world ends, and the campaign could explore ways to cure them of the Madness.